A recipe for skills success - A £3m funding package for ‘Food Skills Cymru’, which will provide technical and staff development training for food and drink companies based in Wales, has been announced by Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths.

Speaking at an ‘Invest in Skills: Invest in Growth’ conference for food and drink companies and training providers, the Cabinet Secretary confirmed the programme will launch on 1st April and run until 2023. The programme, which will be run by Lantra, will include accredited and non-accredited training plus in-house company bespoke support. Over the first three years, the programme is expected to support 650 businesses. It will be available to all Food Supply Chain businesses outside retail and intervention rates will be in line with the complementary support offered through Business Wales Skills Gateway, Project Helix and Cywain.

Further information about Food Skills Cymru can be found by contacting Lantra (Wales@Lantra.co.uk / 01982 552646)

Despite our best efforts the new Package Travel Regulations are due to come into force on 1 July 2018. Ahead of this, BEIS is developing guidance on the application of the new Regulations, which it is planning publish after the Easter break. This will apply if a business is providing packages, combinations of two or more of the following products – travel, accommodation, rental car and “other Tourism Service”. For “Value-Added” products (Accommodation and Other Tourism Service) a package is only formed when the Other Tourism Service is “significant”. we await guidance as to how BEIS define “significant”?

The new regulations also introduce a new category of package called a “Linked Travel Arrangement” whereby a business facilitates a customer purchasing two different types of product through the separate selection and payment of each product. This could impact on how DMOs sell their members’ products on their website.

A Linked Travel Arrangement is also formed when a customer, having purchased a product on one website, is invited to purchase another product on another website. This could impact how tourism businesses provide information and links to other local tourism businesses. For example, if a customer purchased accommodation from a B&B, and was sent a confirmation saying “We look forward to seeing you on the 30 June, if you want to purchase tickets to the local attraction or book a meal in the local pub, here’s their websites”, this could constitute a Linked Travel Arrangement.

On 1 April 2018 devolution in Wales will enter a new phase, as many of the provisions of the Wales Act 2017 will come into force. A key part of the Wales Act 2017 is that it gives the Assembly powers to amend parts of the Government of Wales Act 2006 which set out the Assembly’s electoral, organisational and internal arrangements. Previously, these powers rested with the UK Parliament. A public consultation on the scope of the potential electoral, organisational and internal reforms to the Wales Act 2017 is currently being run by the Welsh Government. The documentation can be viewed at www.assembly.wales/futuresenedd. It closes on Friday 6 April 2018.

There is still time to run on Wales EU funding programmes 2014–2020. The Welsh Government have published a policy paper Regional Investment in Wales after Brexit. This they state,  ' is the first step in the process of designing a new approach to regional economic development in Wales' and forms one in a series of Securing Wales’ Future  papers setting out our vision for Wales once we have left the EU.  

There is an Online Survey at www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/RegionalInvestmentafterBrexit/​where you can register your views on the ideas and proposals set out in the paper. 

The survey closes  23 March 2018.

France continues to be a more popular destination for Indian visitors than the UK – with the latest research showing the gap is widening. Research by The Royal Commonwealth Society shows that despite the UK’s historic cultural and economic links with India, France attracted 185,000 more Indian business visitors and tourists in 2016.
 
Overall the number of visits to the UK by Indian nationals fell by 1.73% in 2016, while in France it grew by 5.3%.
 
Commenting on the research, Director of The Royal Commonwealth Society, Michael Lake, said: “Given the strong historic ties between the UK and India in areas such as trade, culture and business, the fact that France continues to attract more Indian visitors than the UK is not only hugely surprising, but also enormously concerning. It’s clear that more needs to be done to build stronger links between such important Commonwealth partners.”   
 
In response to these statistics, MPs, The Royal Commonwealth Society and representatives from the travel and tourism sector are today in Parliament reiterating their calls for a UK-Indian bilateral visa agreement to stop this decline and kick-start growth in the number of Indian visitors to the UK. The call comes ahead of the Commonwealth Summit, being held in London next month, which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend.
 
Given that the competitiveness of the UK visa offering globally has plummeted from 22nd to 108th in international rankings, a UK-India bilateral visa agreement would be an ideal initial step in making the UK a more attractive destination for Indian visitors. The agreement would be similar to the one recently put in place with China.
 
Virendra Sharma MP, who is supporting the campaign, said: “A new UK-India bilateral visa agreement will enhance trade and tourism, as well as strengthen important business and cultural ties, enabling both the UK and India to capitalise on future global opportunities.”

Fact sheet on Indian Tourism to UK: 
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For more information go to the Home Office Page - www.gov.uk/guidance/status-of-eu-nationals-in-the-uk-what-you-need-to-know . The main points on the agreement the UK Govt has reached for EU citizens and their families is:

·         People who, by 29 March 2019, have been continuously and lawfully living here for 5 years will be able to apply to stay indefinitely by getting ‘settled status’. That means they will be free to live here, have access to public funds and services and go on to apply for British Citizenship.
·         People who arrive by 29 March 2019, but won’t have been living here lawfully for 5 years when we leave the EU, will be able to apply to stay until they have reached the 5-year threshold. They can then also apply for settled status.
·         Family members who are living with, or join, EU citizens in the UK by 29 March 2019 will also be able to apply for settled status, usually after 5 years in the UK.
·         Close family members (spouses, civil and unmarried partners, dependent children and grandchildren, and dependent parents and grandparents) will be able to join EU citizens after exit, where the relationship existed on 29 March 2019.

EU citizens with settled status or temporary permission to stay will have the same access as they currently do to healthcare, pensions and other benefits in the UK. There is no need for EU citizens living in the UK to do anything now in terms of applying for settled status. There will be a new user-friendly scheme to apply for settled status which will launch later in 2018.

Mark Drakeford AM has today announced in favour of a Land Tax, however in plenary he also stated that work will continue to develop the three other tax ideas on the shortlist - which of course has included a tourism tax.

Conservative Party Finance spokesman Nick Ramsay said it would keep on campaigning against a tourism tax "until Labour's finance secretary consigns this ludicrous proposal to where it belongs: the bin". 

It therefore appears that Mark Drakeford AM has not totally rejected the idea. A Welsh Government Spokesperson has stated' 'The Minister recognises the issues and has heard the views expressed to him over recent months.  He has decided to explore ways in which local authorities could be given permissive powers to develop and implement a local tourism tax. He intends that we will work with the tourism sector, the Welsh Local Government Association and other interested parties to do this.  We anticipate this will be a longer term piece of work'.

Does this mean 22 new tax regimes for tourism? ​

The WTA will be arranging to meet the Treasury Dept shortly.

​Wales Tourism Week 2018 will be upon us in the not too distant future, (12th May - 20th May 2018) with our Annual Reception at the Senedd on the 15th May.

As ever we are looking for events to register for Wales Tourism Week. It is an opportunity to ‘meet and greet’ introduce a local politician to the industry across Wales in their constituency or simply hold a celebration of tourism in Wales. 

If you have an event you would like to register so that we can promote it here, on-line or generally to Wales Tourism Alliance members you can submit an event by simply completing our events page on this site - http://www.wta.org.uk/meetings--events.html or drop me Adrian an email at info@wta.org.uk

International Passenger Survey - Revenue for the year to October 2017 showed a 10% increase. Holidays and long-haul travel are the key growth areas, while business tourism remained depressed compared to the previous year. Tourism from North America seems to have dropped significantly down 11% over the three months to October 2017 while still showing an 11% increase for the year as a whole. Despite the fall in the value of the pound and a spike in inflation, outbound tourism is still holding up a lot better than would have been presumed. Down just 1% in volume and 2% in expenditure.
 
GB Tourism Survey - Visitor numbers are down 1% to 90.4m and expenditure up just 1.9% to £18.3bn, which is lower than the rate of inflation. As with the IPS figures, there are significant differences between different forms of tourism. Holidays are doing well with visitor numbers up 5.4%  (to 47.4m) and expenditure up 6% to £11.4bn. Meantime VFR is subdued with numbers down 3.1% to 29m and spend down 0.8% to £3.3bn. However,  business tourism, is shown tracking way down at -10.6% in volume (to 11.5m) and -7.6% in value (to £3.0bn).

The CMS Select Committee has released their report on the impact of Brexit on the creative, tourism and digital industries that was undertaken just before the snap General Election. The tourism-related findings are supportive of the tourism industry and reflect key messages made to Government on the positioning of the UK tourism industry in order to provide growth for the UK economy in a post-Brexit environment. Full report here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/365/365.pdf
 
The UK creative, tech and tourism industries need sufficient access to talent to continue as world leaders. That is self evidently in the nature of being a global centre of excellence in these areas. The then Secretary of State, Rt Hon Karen Bradley MP, said that Brexit is an opportunity to think about “how we can upskill our native workforce”, but this alone will not address the challenges that businesses face today particularly in an increasingly globalised and international sector. Brexit will place a greater urgency on developing the skills of the domestic workforce, but we cannot allow a skills gap to occur which could create shortages of essential workers for businesses in the UK as a result of our departure from the EU. 

Effective policy cannot be developed if the Government underestimates the extent to which these thriving industries depend on staff drawn from the EU. It is essential, therefore, that the Government and its advisory bodies—including the Creative Industries Council, the Tourism Industry Council and the Migration Advisory Committee—take these considerations into account in their analysis of the impact of Brexit on the UK’s future labour market. 

Simplicity should be a key feature of the future migration arrangements that the UK will agree with the EU….. We believe, therefore, that the Government should seek to retain free movement of people during any transitional period after the UK formally ceases to be a member of the EU in March 2019. If the visa system is to change subsequently, an intensive and detailed process of consultation with all those affected will need to begin as soon as possible. 

Brexit provides an opportunity for the Government to overhaul the existing visa system. We believe that salary levels are a crude proxy for value and fail to recognize the central role that workers from the EU and beyond play in making British businesses successful. We recommend that the Government explores ways in which commercial value, and value to specific sectors of the economy, can be factored into the UK’s post-Brexit immigration system. 

The Government should publish a map of all EU funding streams that support tourism and creative projects, whether dedicated to this specific purpose or not. Thismapping exercise should:
• spell out where previous EU funding has, directly or indirectly, benefitted these sectors;
• indicate those streams that will need to be replaced;
• provide an overview of the total sum of funding that the UK government will provide to cover these costs; and
• clarify the role of the devolved administrations in the present arrangements and their proposed role in the future in the eyes of the UK Government.

In addition, the Treasury and DCMS should illustrate how ‘value for money’ will be measured in any assessment of those EU funds that will be honoured by the Government’s guarantee.
 
The Government should set out as a matter of urgency those areas where it believes that Brexit offers an opportunity for beneficial regulatory reforms and how it intends to capitalise on any such opportunities. 

Given the potential benefits to the British tourist industry, while the Government is grappling with the challenges posed by Brexit, it would be wise to design a new system also to encourage more tourism from non-EU markets. We recommend that the Government publishes an analysis of how the visa system could be developed to boost inbound tourism by visitors from beyond the EU.
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